The Journals of Rapture: Dr V Jasper Part One
by Dr. J. Vasper
Summary: When Victor Jasper recieves a note after being sent home from the hospital and is summoned to rapture by an old friend of his with a crazy dream... Andrew Ryan. Victor is a made up character; assumed to have died in the New Years incident.
1. A New Oppurtunity

The Journal of Dr. V. Jasper,

In my younger days life, as it seemed, was going my way. I wasn't your straight a student, and then again not you're typical out going kid either. My parents were very proud, nevertheless and knew some day I'd do great things.

I had a great love of science when I was young, I would spend all my time in my apartment attic reading all the books I would take out from the library and would try to imitate some of the lab experiments in them. I also enjoyed inventing and building little gadgets, such as one of my favorite mishaps, the water sprinkler which ended up flooding the entire back yard of the house.

But even with the many mistakes I made, I always persevered and continued to love science to the extent that I got many different scholarships at the end of my high school career. I had so many different places I could have gone; I would have loved to go to, but of course cancer hit me at the age of nine-teen.

Throughout that period of my life, everything seemed hopeless. All my life's hopes and dreams had just been flushed down the toilet. I sat in that hospital bed until I was twenty four and I finally regained my ability to walk again after being in a bed for years. The last time my parents had come to visit me was 1946, I think. I had not seen them since then. The war was pretty much over and I would have fought for my country, had I been able to lift a finger.

But when I returned home, the apartment had been evicted for reasons unknown to me today. No one was there. My parents had apparently been gone for almost two years and I had no way to track them down. My life as it seemed was at its final destination.

No, for I had another chance. Someone had slipped a carefully sealed envelope in my jeans back pocket. It had no return address, just my name on the front, and a signature on the back which I made out as: Andrew Ryan. The name seemed oddly familiar. But I opened the letter without any further thought. The letter enclosed a ferry ticket and a note that read:

Dear my good friend,

I'm pleased to hear you are feeling better. I figured you'd want another start on your life, and I know you love science so I decided to take you somewhere where your scientific ability could flourish… underneath the ocean. Yes my friend, my dream of a city underneath the ocean had been a complete success. They laughed at me, but you! You thought it was a wonderful idea! That is why I'm bringing you here; I need someone with your senses by my side in the descent to RAPTURE!

ANDREW RYAN


	2. Andrew Ryan

Andrew Ryan, I recalled, was a kid who lived in my neighborhood during my childhood. He was a good kid, though a little on the strange side. His parents were divorced when he was nine and he went to live with his grandmother in the Big Apple. That's when I met him at school. He looked like a nervous wreck and was shaking when he entered the classroom. The teacher sat him down behind me and he was quiet for about three months, until I started to talk to him.

He was a genius! His math skills were beyond his age group and he still was in my grade. He should've been in at least high school but here he was in middle school, drowning out the obscenities of his classmates and working hard at learning. He was an inspiration to me, and he was a good friend of mine.

But during high school his grades started to drop, he was losing focus in all of his classes. He was bent on creating a city underwater that he could do whatever he pleased in. People picked on him for his crazy idea and he got beat up a lot. He didn't care, he said, "Well, my friends, when the day comes that society is in ruin, the ocean will be on my shoulders and you will be crawling to me!"

That scared me a bit, honestly.

But I went along with his crazy idea, drawing up sketches on scrap paper in my mechanical drawing class and just getting down to his level when he started to talk about it. For all I knew the kid would be in a mental institution in a couple years anyway.

But he never did.

He enlisted in the army at the age of eight-teen and fought in WWII. People I talked to who knew him said "he always looked like he had a severe case of shell-shock but was always able to fight like a bad-ass." But when he returned from the war, no one ever really saw him again. That was the last they heard of him. He wasn't even at the victory celebrations.

I looked at that note for a bit. Was Andrew Ryan really still alive? I doubted it but decided to curb my curiosity and wandered down to the ferry docks. They weren't open for hours of course but I lay down on the beach, smelling the air and enjoying my free time. I sat and thought about my new chance, a life without cancer.

Before I knew it the docks were open and ferries were pouring from all over the place. I stumbled onto the docks and gave my ticket to the lady at the booth. She smiled warmly and stamped the ticket and I was on my way. The ticket said to go to station thirty-two, and I found the rickety dock with no problem, but there was no-one there. Oddly I still waited at the dock until a small rusty tugboat pulled up. The smell of it made me gag and I felt sea sick almost immediately.

An odd looking man appeared out of all the filth on the boat and shook my hand.

"Gooday mistah Jasper! Nice day we be havin'."

I responded trying to keep the contents of my stomach where it was,

"Yes… is this the boat to..." I peered at my ticket. "Rapture?"

The man smiled through the grit on his teeth.

"Of course!" he exclaimed. "Why would a fine vessel like this'm be goin' anywhere else?"

Fine vessel my ass, I thought.

Within minutes I was on the stinky boat and the engines started up. He beckoned me inside but I told him I like to be outside on a ship, which wasn't a lie. I love to see the waves against the boat and all the islands we pass. A little later my stomach was under control and I was on my way to Rapture, the city of opportunity.


	3. The Ocean

We stopped at a small seaport a couple hours later, to refuel the smelly tugboat and our ravaging stomachs. The majority of the tugboat crew wandered off to the nearest bar in search of drinks, while the captain and I walked to the Limping Pirate Restaurant.

The restaurant was a shabby looking place, hunched over on a hill by the shore, although I do say the food was quite good.

The captain and I were seated at the way back of the sea trinket-lined wall. There was very little light but we managed to order our food and drinks. We sat in silence for a few minutes and then the captain asked about the trip so far.

"It was quite nice, I was overjoyed to get back on a boat again," I lied through my teeth, for the boat smelled like a goat's ass. "I love the ocean."

"Great," he replied. "The second half of this trip is going to be interesting."

I looked at him for a few seconds and asked why.

The captain went on and on about how dangerous the ocean really was, and how it's not all that safe as it's said to be. He told of vicious storms, pirates and the dangerous waves that could shred boats into pieces if you were not careful.

I tried to keep the conversation going by asking him some of his personal sea stories but he refused to tell me any of them. Well, until I got a few drinks into him.

He opened up, telling me of how his family was killed in the Holocaust and how he was the only living member of his family to this day. He said how he had nothing better to live for than the life of a sailor. He took his uncles old tugboat to the harbor and did personal goods runs to nearby places and in rare occasions used it for transportation.

It was only then when he started to slur his words when I figured I ought to get him back aboard his ship. I really wanted to sea the city of Rapture in all its glory. I was curious to see how well Ryan had done with his ultimate dream and how well it was doing for him.

But the captain insisted I stay and have a few more drinks with him. I said what the hell and had several more drinks. I think I must have had at least eight of nine bottles (that I could remember) and before I knew it I was mad drunk. I barley recall being carried to the boat under the moonlight and I swear I saw a man in a diving suit carrying me to the boat.

But of course it could have been anything!

I awoke later the next day to a ringing alarm clock at my bedside on the porthole window. The awful noise made my head feel like it was going to explode into a million pieces and there was puke on the floor.

The door creaked open and the funny talking man popped his head in and cried out:

"Breakfast is served sir!"

He sounded like a little child waking up on Christmas morning waiting to open his presents. I followed the man down a corridor into the kitchen. My eyes lit up, and I thought it may as well been Christmas!

The entire kitchen was filled with the most sensational smells. The tables were lined with glorious piles of food. Bacon, ham, sausage and other meats lined one table and fruits and veggies on the other. It was like heaven on earth.

I laughed and took a big plate and filled it up and got a cup of coffee from the man standing in the kitchen. I had never seen so much food in my life! I ate the food until I felt sick to my stomach.

We had breakfast until about ten thirty in the morning. The captain called me up to the deck and he pointed to what looked like a small island. I asked him what island it was.

"It's not," he said quite grimly. "They're shipwrecks, all piled here for reasons unknown."

It was a huge scrap yard of ships, new and old. There were World War II battleships, freighters, oil tankers, you name it. All sorts of cruise liners, speed boats and other vessels were all piled up at this one location. The captain went and looked over at the sonar. The entire screen was covered in tiny green blips and the machine was beeping like mad.

"We are entering an extremely dangerous zone," the captain said still grimly. I asked him what happened here. The captain shrugged. He obviously didn't know. "We just find them here like this." He said after a few moments.

I stared out onto the ocean for a little while, curious as to how the ships got there and what happened to them. I went back outside and sometimes we got so close to some of the shipwrecks that you could touch them.

But of course I didn't; the massive piles of steel were covered in rust, barnacles and sharp edges, so I decided not to.

Along that area we went for a few more hours. The scrap yard kept going and going, as far as the eye could see. We were there until dark. At one point of going through the piles of crap, the boat just stopped.

"Everyone down!" someone yelled. The deck of the ship exploded into a ball of fire and I almost fell topside. I ran to the back of the ship to see what had happened. Someone had shot a rocket into the boat's engine and the engine lay in fiery pieces on the boat's deck.

The entire crew was scrambling around to put the fires out and to get the ship back behind something where it couldn't be shot at again. Pistol shots rang out and the people on the deck started dropping all around me.

I was sure that this was the end…

The funny talking man, as another explosion sounded, pulled me behind a stack of crates and yelled "Do you see that box over there?" I looked around, and my eyes spotted exactly what he was looking at. It was a red emergency trunk, with the white cross and all.

"Yeah, I see it!" I screamed over the hiss of another rocket being fired.

"Okay, go to it and grab three flares inside of the box for me. I'll cover you!" he yelled back. He loaded his pistol, a huge revolver and started to fire rounds into the unseen enemy. "GO!" he ordered.

I ran as fast as I could to that box, and it still felt like I was running in slow motion. I opened the heavy lid and pulled out a small plastic water-proof container of flares. I ran as fast as I could back to the pile of crates.

"Good," he said and started to open the box of flares. He attached a small rod into each flare, and plunged it into the barrel of his pistol and shot them one by one into the wreckage where the shots were being fired from. He tossed me a large machine gun, WWII era I recall, and pointed to where he could see the shots coming from.

The recoil on that gun was dangerous. I almost knocked myself over three times. My war experience came in handy for picking off the people hiding in the wrecks. I recall missing two shots but otherwise I did pretty well, although a bit rusty at reloading the thing.

I had my sights set on one figure heading away from the wreckages when the entire boat just exploded in flames. Another rocket had pierced through the gas tank in the hull. We had lost the tugboat.

The entire crew jumped into the water as the boat slowly sunk into the murky depths of the ocean. One man, on fire, jumped off the lookout into the water, somewhat unharmed.

The pirates were gone before long; apparently every crew member had pistols so they fired shots into the dark until not a sound was heard from the wreckages. We sat in the water for about an hour, not moving a muscle in fear we would be shot at again.

But we slowly climbed out onto the scattered wreckages, hiding in what shelter we could find. The boat I climbed into was a small U-Boat, and still had some weapons in it too. No bodies though, to my relief. The funny talking man climbed in after me and patted me on the back and holstered his pistol in his back pocket.

The captain called out from a small sailboat a few yards away "Everyone accounted for!?"

A few people said things like "Jacks a goner" and things like "Red Eye Pete is missing" and I also thought I heard "where's my lunch?" in the midst of it all.

"Damn." The captain swore.

I pointed to a dim light emerging from the murky water around my U-Boat. It grew brighter and brighter and I figured it must have been a submarine of some sort. The crew stared in curiosity but still had their hands on their pistols. Bubbles began forming on the surface of the water and a mechanical groan was heard from underneath.

A small spherical sub broke the surface, and it was covered in tons of seaweed and barnacles. The huge steel door on the side creaked and hissed open and a long hand stretched out towards me.

"Andrew Ryan?" I exclaimed.


	4. Authors Note

Authors Note: The First Encounter with Andrew Ryan

Of course, Vasper's journal, after rotting in Rapture for over thirteen years, would might have some unreadable content. Unfortunately I could not recover enough information on Vasper's first encounter with Andrew Ryan.

I assume it was just a friendly chat, followed by a description of the city and some catching up of each others lives. The sailors on the tugboat as far as we know were relocated to the city of Rapture, as my sources tell me. The incident with the pirates had taken four crew members lives; only one was recovered after being found on sub in the Rapture docks.

My other sources tell me that Vasper did not accept the ADAM at first but did so later after much persuasion. This event will be covered in later chapters of this journal. I assume the guy was too shaken up as it was from the pirates to stab a needle into his arm with a substance unbeknownst to him.

The encounter although ever recorded may have been audio taped from the security bot inside the sub at the time. I have yet to locate this machine and find the audio tape of the meeting. Wish me luck.


End file.
